Pastor Bruce and the four elders were with him on platform, beaming. The poinsettias on the steps of the platform stood tall with their red faces lifted toward the frigid blueness streaming through the sanctuary skylight. He felt like he was graduating again, but for some reason it felt more like kindergarten than university. Even when he was a five year-old boy, he couldn’t help feeling that he didn’t deserve all of the fanfare. At least he wasn’t wearing a paper cap and gown.
But at the same time, it felt good. He had wanted to become a member of Mercy ever since he made the decision to stay in Grover. They had done so much for him, and had enfolded him with more acceptance than he could have hoped for. And he felt least like a fraud than at any other time in his life, so that was a good sign. He hoped.
As he listened to his part of the membership covenant, he nodded and affirmed that he would be faithful to the congregation, and would do his best to encourage and spur them on as they did the same for him. And he meant it.
And he had meant every word of the meandering testimony he had given to the elders. He was embarrassed that it wasn’t clean and linear, and seemed to wander all over the place. He kept stopping himself and qualifying every detail, stammering over the precise moment he had apprehended a spiritual reality. They nodded and assured him, but he still wondered if they really understood. If they could look under the hood to evaluate the mechanics of his spirituality, would they come to the same assessment? If they really knew how hard he had to try.
But they had accepted him, and now, were codifying his inclusion into the people of God. He couldn’t help feeling that he still wasn’t worthy to be counted among them. But he was doing it anyway. Maybe in faith, or maybe in desperation.
Follow Me.
It was all he could do. He couldn’t go back again. He wouldn’t. Even if whatever he did was going to be homely and pathetic and unworthy, he was not going back.
As he was hugged and clapped on the back after the service, he realized that his footsteps were at last joining the throng before him. His was an uneven stride, still weak on one side as he limped to keep pace. But he was not alone. Some were feeble, like him, and some were strong. But they were all following, eyes straight ahead.
—
He found it ironic and somewhat poetic that he had used the money from his Rimshot to pay for a decrepit, but valiant, Camry. It already had 230,000 miles on it, but compared to the cars he’d grown up with, it was straight off the factory floor. He only needed it for work, and Brent had suggested that after two years, he could request to work remotely. That would require him to find a location to work from, and as much as he enjoyed free rent, he liked the idea of having a bedroom where he hadn’t once worn firetruck pajamas and wet the bed.
Grover was not a hot real estate market, so he didn’t need to save a fortune for a down payment. Checking the local house listings had become a pleasant habit in the evenings. He knew he wanted a finished basement, or at the very least, a dry basement where he could set up a projector for football games, and a big fenced-in backyard for Joule to play with the black Labrador they were going to buy someday. Other than that, he didn’t have very steep expectations.
—
The dining room table was fairly sagging beneath the weight of the spread. Buffalo wings, nachos, brats, kielbasa and kraut, pierogis, potato skins, cheesy potatoes, potato salad, Jell-O salad, and various and sundry desserts. Half of Mount of Mercy had descended on his parents’ house to observe New Years Eve and watch the Hawkeyes take on the Badgers.
“You’ve put on some weight,” Nick said with approval, dumping an extra scoop of ambrosia on his plate.
“So have you,” Casper grinned, jabbing his brother in the gut. “And give me some of that,” he said, picking out a miniature marshmallow and popping it in his mouth. Nick smirked and ladled on a heap of the gooey fruit salad.
“Seriously, I’ve never seen you so fat. I can barely see through you anymore.” Casper nodded, obviously pleased, and licked a bit of Cool Whip off his thumb. “Don’t tell me Mom’s cooking has improved.”
“Ha! She never cooks anymore. I still have to pull my weight around here somehow. Though I have broadened my repertoire beyond meatloaf.” Casper motioned for Nick to lean closer. “Mama Reyes has been teaching me to cook.” He lowered his voice and glanced furtively around the room. “Last week, I made the chicken mole.”
“What? No fair! That’s a family secret.”
“Used to be. Just don’t tell Rosa.”
“Oh, I’m definitely telling Rosa that her mom is a traitor. It’s like loyalty to the family means nothing anymore. How did you wheedle the mole out of Mimi?”
“All I did was ask,” he shrugged.
“It was Joule, wasn’t it?” Casper shrugged again, grinning. Nick narrowed his eyes. “Enjoy it now, Cass. But you’ll only get so far trading on your baby’s good looks. Soon he’s going to get too big for that. Mikayla’s already aging out. You should have heard the lecture we got from Mom after she accidentally,” Nick strongly emphasized the word, “knocked over that stupid duck figurine on Sunday.”
“I was here when that happened, Nick. Remember? And as I recall, she was running around the living room brandishing a rainstick.”
“Whatever. That duck was stupid and ugly.”
“It was,” Casper admitted.
“By the way — Mack said his cousin is coming tonight.”
“Yeah, he told me. The one who is super competitive at Risk. Though I don’t think we’re going to play tonight.” He checked his watch. “Kickoff is in fifteen minutes.”
“No, not that guy! Angela! Remember…she’s got brown hair or something?” Casper stared at his brother, incredulous. “What? I’ve waited a respectful period, haven’t I?”
“You’ve been trying to set me up for months. I’m still not interested, Nick.”
“Why not? You moved back for good, what was it—over a year ago?”
“Seventeen months.”
“How long are you going to persist with the monk thing?”
“Shut up, all right?” Casper muttered as he elbowed his brother. “What’s up, Rice?” Abby tossed up a hand as she reached between him and Nick for a napkin.
“Don’t mind me. I just spilled guac on myself.” She looked down and blotted the greenish smear on her yellow University of Iowa t-shirt. “I’m making it so much worse, aren’t I?”
“Nice going, Rice,” Nick said as he stuffed a handful of shredded cheese into his mouth.
“My mom’s got Oxi-Fresh in the basement if you want to pre-treat it,” Casper offered. Nick grinned at him. “It’s on the shelf above the washer.” Abby thanked him and walked away. “Don’t start, Nick.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t see it before!”
“You didn’t see anything.”
“It makes perfect sense. She’s practically raising your kid.” Across the room, Casper heard Joule shriek with laughter. Sue Strom was bouncing him and Abby was standing at the basement door with Silver-Foot hanging over her arm. He watched as she managed to cradle twenty pounds of gray, meowing dead weight, and keep Joule enthralled in a game of peekaboo at the same time. “Just promise not to be weird about it, Cass,” Nick said, losing his smirk. “Can’t do much better than Rice.”
—
A collective groan sounded from the living room. He hoped it wasn’t another turnover. Iowa was down 17-7, and the quarterback was getting frazzled as he was repeatedly flushed out of the pocket. He kept panicking, throwing wild passes into traffic. Casper strained to hear the commentary on the TV, but couldn’t hear anything over the party conversations.
He had optimized his order of operations to maximize efficiency, and barring calamitous blowouts, he could change a diaper in less than two minutes. He slid a clean diaper under Joule’s bottom and fastened it closed. For a moment, he gazed at the pink seam running down his son’s sternum. He couldn’t help it. It always arrested him. As he always did, he touched the place with his fingertips, a silent prayer of gratitude.
“Thump-thump,” he whispered, in time with the beautiful rhythm. A cheer erupted from the living room. Casper sat back on his ankles, listening intently. He plucked Joule’s Hawkeyes jersey from the floor. “Come on, bud. Let’s—,” The joyful braying intensified, finally funneling into one coherent, glorious phrase.
“Pick-six! Pick-six!” Before he knew what was happening, he was panting behind the couch, peering over a room of heads to see the replay. Joule was wriggling in his arms, clad only in a diaper and one sock.
“Jorgenson, did you see it?” Abby pointed to the screen. “Mr. J, can you back it up again? Casper missed it.” As Dad obliged, Abby jumped out of her seat on the couch, stepping over the back as if it were a hurdle in a track and field event.
“There,” she pointed to her empty spot on the couch. “Go watch it. It was beautiful.” His eyes darted toward the screen to see the beautiful play. While he was staring at the replay, he felt Joule lifted from his hands and secured firmly in Abby’s arms. “Look, look,” she whispered. The ball sailed twenty, then thirty, then forty yards, arcing like a rainbow before it was neatly caught by the Hawkeyes safety. As he charged forward with it, the rest of the defensive line blocked for him, allowing him to race down the field, ending with a back flip into the end zone. It was beautiful. The room responded to the replay as if it were happening in real-time, uproarious and jubilant. Casper turned to Abby for a high-five, but she was gone.
He found her in his old bedroom, pulling the jersey over Joule’s head.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Wasn’t it beautiful?” she asked, grinning. “Did they kick the extra point yet?” Abby directed Joule’s pudgy foot through one pant leg, then the other. Before she helped Joule stand up, she blew a raspberry on his belly. “Did they?” she asked again.
“I don’t know. I came to find you.” Abby found the sock Joule had kicked off and replaced it.
“He’s all yours,” she said, handing Joule back to him. “Let’s get back in there. We’re going to win this thing.”
—
>> I’m on the way. I’m so sorry. Be there in 45.
Abby responded with a picture of Joule in a high chair, his happy cheeks smeared with spaghetti sauce.
Casper smiled, blew on his palms to warm them, and turned the key to his faithful beige Camry. He queued up a podcast and pulled on to the dark highway. His phone buzzed and he glanced down to see a text in the office group thread. Brent apologized for the late meeting. Three responses shortly followed, all variations of “nbd.”
Kleen-Sol wasn’t a bad place to work. All of his coworkers were unobtrusive and male, and being as he was, the low man on the totem pole, he was largely left alone. The tasks he was given to complete didn’t stimulate his intellect much, being little more than glorified data entry, but he was still making more than he had at Carver.
He flicked down the turn signal and accelerated to pass a sluggish minivan. Powdery snow swept across the dry, frigid plains, dusting the road before swirling off again into the blackness. He smirked as he sped past a poorly lit billboard advertising the local injury attorney, Dan Flay. Flay Makes Them Pay!
He was continually surprised by his renewed affection for those provincial artifacts of Grover that he had once found so embarrassing. The mini-mall where the cool kids would congregate when playing hooky, indulging in Slim Jims and Mountain Dew while they smirked at the nerds and losers watching them with envy from the bus. Tootie’s Tires, the derelict repair shop which had been out of commission for as long as he could remember, the yellowed windows blocked up with Bush-Cheney ’04 yard signs. The old Herschel farm, with its fences and outbuildings perpetually decorated for Halloween.
In years past, he had been annoyed with the Grover complacency and its comfortable acceptance of all things uncouth. Yet passing by them in the dead of winter, a season which did nothing to enhance their charm, he was strangely soothed by the contentedness of places left unchanged. Sometimes it seemed to him that he had been to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, or at least, to the depths of the earth and back again, and to find that life in his unflappable hometown had faithfully gone on without him was a comfort.
As he was coming up to Nick and Rosa’s road, his headlights caught the sight of something bright and unfamiliar planted by the shoulder. A For Sale sign. Curious, he slowed and turned down the road. Unlike his parents’ road, which was sparsely populated and surrounded by fields, Nick and Rosa’s was a growing neighborhood, having been purchased by a developer years back and carved into tracts with bland, yet attractive new homes springing up like mushrooms.
At the time of the purchase, there had been a dispute with a stubborn homeowner who didn’t want to sell his land to a city slicker from Cedar Falls. It was a highly publicized and extremely controversial issue, becoming known locally as the Jensen affair, with the entire Grover populace taking sides either with or against the machine of progress. Quietly, he had hoped to see the bedraggled property cleared of its rusted heaps of steel, piles of mildewed lumber, and skeletal trees, and the sprawling, decrepit house replaced with a tidy four-bedroom. But the good man clung to his principles to the end, his messy lot both an eyesore for the neighbors and a bulwark for liberty.
Casper slowed down when he saw the second For Sale sign. As he had suspected, it was planted in front of the old Jensen place. TWO SPACIOUS ACRES, LOTS OF POTENTIAL! MINDY KLUGMAN, HEARTH HOMES. Mindy Klugman clearly understood the political significance of the home, as evidenced by the apparent lack of effort to spruce it up. Had she lifted a finger to beautify it, passersby may have suspected an attempt to lure rich urbanites to the listing, thus introducing the blight of rural gentrification to the landscape. Instead, it sat far back from the road, its chipped white siding dimly lit by the amber garage light, like a sleeping face in the darkness. He pulled over and stopped the car, and looked up the address in his phone. He found the listing and began to swipe through the photos. Just then, his phone buzzed.
It was another text from Abby.
>> want to stay for the basketball game? hawks vs kansas
He instantly put the car in reverse and turned back to the highway. With one hand gripping the wheel and his eyes darting to the road and back down, he typed out a response.
>> You’re on.
—
Abby welcomed him into her parents’ house with Joule on her hip.
“He’s the last one here, isn’t he? I’m so sorry, Abby.”
“Hi, Casper!” Kerry Rice called as she passed with a basket of laundry.
“Hey, Mrs. Rice.”
“Hiiii, Daaaaaad,” Joule drawled. He rolled to his back until he was hanging upside down, reaching for Casper with chubby hands. Casper took him and kissed him.
“It’s fine, Jorgenson. I promise,” Abby assured him. “Joule is a dream. And since Josie is in kindergarten now, I’m still only watching three kids total.”
“Only.” He adjusted Joule in his arms. “I missed you, Bud. How was your day?”
“Want some sabeggy?”
“Do you want some spaghetti?” Abby repeated the question as she gestured toward two cold pots on the sauce-splattered stove. “Don’t worry, I didn’t cook it. It’s Ragu.”
“I shouldn’t. My parents’ fridge is full of leftovers. Rosa’s mom only cooks in quantities suitable for funerals and weddings. I have enough chilaquiles to last me till Joule is old enough to shave. I should have brought some for you in lieu of payment.”
“You can still do that. But I’d only consider it a tip.”
“Wow, you’ve changed your tune. Remember when you told me I didn’t even need to pay you?” Abby laughed and rolled her eyes.
“You’re remembering wrong. I offered you a reduced-rate and you got offended.”
“Sorry. I was a little touchy at that time,” he admitted.
“I meant what I said,” she said, twisting her hair into a clip at the back of her head. “Go get the chilaquiles and I’ll do what I can for you. I’m pretty hungry.”
Thirty minutes later, they were seated at the Rice dining room table with a steaming Pyrex dish between them. Abby scooped some of the cheesy casserole on to her plate and topped it with a squeeze of sour cream and a dribble of hot sauce. Casper jostled Joule on his knee and handed him a tortilla chip. Joule munched it happily, peppering Casper’s leg with bits of chip.
“So, what kind of data entry emergency kept you at work so late?” Abby asked, blowing on a forkful before taking a bite. She closed her eyes as she chewed. “Fair,” she pronounced, covering her full mouth with her hand.
“Glad you like it,” he said, pleased.
“It’s a little spicy, though. And the chips are a bit chewy. But otherwise, it’s decent.” He smiled.
“It wasn’t an emergency, so to speak. More like an erroneous function that affected — you know what? It’s too boring to talk about.” He took a bite, savoring the flavor. “And these chips aren’t chewy.” Abby smiled.
“Not quite the work you were used to at Carver.”
“I wasn’t doing anything glamorous there, either. In time, I would have been able to do some cool stuff. But things went a different direction.” Joule reached into the bag of chips and offered him one. He kissed his son’s forehead and received it gladly.
“I know how that feels,” she said. “I was actually—,”
“Jorgenson,” Ed Rice appeared from behind him and clapped him on the back. Casper paused to keep from choking. “How’s it going over there at Kleen-Sol?”
“Can’t complain, Mr. Rice,” he said, clearing his throat.
“Working with Brent Bondurant, right?”
“Brent Grosse, Dad,” Abby answered.
“Right, the Grosse kid. Sarah had a few classes with him in high school. He was —,” Ed hesitated and shrugged. “Well, I’m sure he’s straightened out now.”
“Can’t complain.” Actually, he could. About Brent’s seeming inability to make accurate estimates on project timelines, or his lack of interest in optimizing workflow efficiency in any capacity. Ed chuckled and took a Dr. Pepper out of the fridge before heading into the living room. Moments later, whistles and the squeaks of sneakers on a basketball court could be heard.
Abby took another bite and stood, cradling her bowl in her hands.
“Come on, Jorgensons,” she said, her gray eyes twinkling. “Game time.”
—
He startled awake by the sudden silence as the noise from the TV was cut off. Joule was conked out on his chest, and Abby was tiptoeing past him, carrying their dinner bowls.
“Did the Hawks win? Why’d you let me fall asleep?” he murmured.
“You didn’t miss anything,” she whispered. “Even my dad went to bed early. It was a bloodbath. Kansas trashed us by thirty points.”
“I’m sorry I stayed so long. I’ve got to get him home.” He stirred, displacing a blanket that had been draped over him.
“You looked cold. I don’t know why you’re wearing short sleeves in January, Jorgenson.” He checked his watch.
“It’s almost ten. My mom is going to be freaking out.” As soon as he said it, he realized it wasn’t true. It wasn’t the first time he’d stayed late at Abby’s.
“One of the beauties of still living with our parents is the unrelenting concern for our welfare at all times.”
“We’re not living with them, Abby. We’re sojourning.”
“I suppose that does make it sound a bit better. Or at least it sounds biblical. Or pathetic. I can’t tell.”
“Let’s go with biblical. Up top,” he said, yawning and holding up his palm. Abby covered a yawn, laughed, and high-fived him.
He closed the car door and shivered. As he pulled out of the driveway and into the night, his eyes lingered on the warm electric Christmas candles still glowing in the windows of her house.
© 2024-2025 Katie Bertola. All rights reserved.
Katie Bertola 